Magnolia Bend, Texas Community Involvement Made MBVFD Happen

With a proven track record that overcame humble beginnings, Magnolia Bend Volunteer Fire Department members proved hard-working volunteer firefighters, with no previous fire training and no money, could somehow manage to get both. The Magnolia Bend VFD today is no longer under contract with the Emergency Services District No. 5, and its independence may rest in the hands of a municipal court. But the pioneers, nonetheless, recall the struggle in the 1970s to set up fire protection for a Montgomery County area that was isolated.

According to residents, it took the whole community to make it happen.

The volunteer fire department was incorporated in December 1970, long before the idea of an ESD or even rural fire protection was born.

Firefighter and businessman Gus Gonzales said the department was actually just an offshoot of the civic association.

"The nearest fire department we had was Conroe," Gonzales said. "But the roads weren't paved. They were gravel roads. FM 1314 was paved, but there were no lights on it. We were, more or less, out here by ourselves. We were real pioneers."

And like the early American settlers, Magnolia Bend residents made do with what they had at their fingertips, or beneath their feet.

"We built it, literally, from the ground up," Gonzales said, and mostly from salvaged materials. "Vernon Meachen used to work in this area," Gonzales said of the resident's former time in the oil business. "He knew where all the pipes were buried. Vernon would walk a little ways and then kick the ground and say, 'Here,' and we'd dig with a shovel, and there'd be a pipe there."

Meachen, indeed, would find enough unused pipe underground to later construct the wall supports for the first Magnolia Bend Volunteer Fire Station, located on Magnolia Bend Drive.

Resident Jake Reeves would cut the pipe, and with a borrowed truck and cable, the group would pull the pipe from underground, with Reeves cutting it into 20-foot sections.

"John McPhillips sandblasted the pipe in order to take all the rust off of it. And then Al Lowery went to work on it and cut it to size before welding it," Gonzales said. "Then the rest of us got to hanging the sheet metal and drilling holes."

So, while it may have been surprising to the men involved, it wasn't surprising to the community when entrepreneur Meachen was later elected as the first fire chief, McPhillips the assistant chief and Gonzales to the board in 1972, by a VFD roster of 72 members.

It was two years before the firefighters attended and graduated from fire school at Texas A&M. But in the early days, Gonzales said there wasn't much time for formal training.

"We just did it. And back then, we'd just get buckets of water and hoses and get to work," Gonzales said. "That was the way we used to fight fires."

And when the community got together to fight a fire, the whole community got together.

"We were unique in our fire department to start with. We had women firefighters, too," Meachen said. "From about 1975 to 1976, we had the ladies auxiliary, who handled promotion and raised money for us."

That money was used to help buy new fire trucks and supplies the station needed.

Meachen said he also liked having the ladies help fight fires. As the department grew and the men began to take fire-training courses, they encouraged the women to participate.

"David (Sweet) had been given some fire training," Meachen said, "and I'd been given some. We were all doing a real good job. We'd put on a good training show with a bunch of men each week showing each other how to use hoses, ladders and stuff. And they wouldn't ask you one question. But that changed with women firefighters. They asked you questions and made you do your homework a whole lot better before you'd put on that same show the next week."

Meachen said he talked to other fire departments, and most of them didn't have women firefighters. "I'd tell them, 'You're missing a sure bet.' They're home in the daytime more than men and they make you do a lot better training at their training sessions because they ask questions."

In fact, Meachen recounted a story about the time when resident Shirley White was in the beauty parlor getting her hair styled one day when her husband Bill was away on business.

"And when the fire call came out, she went to the fire in good clothes," Meachen said. "When the fire was over, it looked like we'd drug her through a mud puddle. She was just as happy as a kid playing with a new toy."

The fire department grew, and the firefighters eventually all got uniforms, but the first ones were used, as was their first fire truck.

"A little group of us that always got together, got to go before Commissioners Court," Meachen said. "We wanted to see if they had any kind of truck. We asked if there was a dump truck at the county with a bed dump they didn't need. They told us they had one, and we asked, 'When can we pick it up?' They said, 'How about this afternoon?'" So, with that, Meachen and other volunteers took the donated truck back to their fire station and work began.

Meachen stretched the dump truck frame and built and mounted a water tank, pump and the manifold connections.

"It was a legal fire truck when we got finished," he said, recalling the truck called Old Yeller. "And the crazy thing is that I never had any ambition of being a fireman."

So, the man who never thought of being a firefighter later became president of the Firefighters Association and was fire chief at Magnolia Bend for four years.

"It kinda grows on you," Meachen said. "For seven years, I used a week of my vacation just going to fire school."

Personal accounts and newspaper clippings show the early Magnolia Bend VFD had a long history of being the center of community activities. From barbecue and bingo parties to Boy Scout meetings and Easter egg hunts, Christmas parties with Santa, Halloween spook houses, hat shows and dart gatherings. The old fire station was the center of activity, with fund-raisers and auctions supplying the money needed to operate, recalled June (Stadel) Godwin, one of the early female firefighters.

"We had a wonderful organization," Gonzales said. "We had an honest to goodness civic organization and fire department. We did our own trash pickup. We did our own grass cutting. We even had a fire patrol."

The old fire station was auctioned in 1987 when the new fire station was constructed on FM 1314. But a scrapbook and photo album guarantees fond memories of the "good ol days" when residents and friends, who once depended on each other for their safety, take time to reminisce.